Minor Sonoran

Minor Sonoran is a term I use to refer to the branch of Southern Uto-Aztecan that includes all the Southern-Uto-Aztecan languages except Tepiman.

It differs from the grouping traditionally called "Sonoran" (e.g. by [[Mason, J. Alden. 1936. "The classification of the Sonoran languages." in Lowie, Robert H. ed. Essays in anthropology in honor of Alfred Louis Kroeber in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, June 11, 1936. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 189-98.|Mason 1936]], Lionnet 1985), in that the latter is in fact an areal grouping, that includes all the Uto-Aztecan branches represented in the Mexican state of Sonora: Tepiman, Cahitan, and Tara-Guarijío-Ópata and Tubar. It also differes from what I call Sonoran languages, which are only those subgroups of the Minor Sonoran branch, that are actually spoken in the state of Sonora, i.e. Cahitan, Tara-guarijío, Ópatan and Tubar.

[[Mason, J. Alden. 1936. "The classification of the Sonoran languages" in Lowie, Robert H. (ed.) Essays in anthropology in honor of Alfred Louis Kroeber in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, June 11, 1936. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 189-98.]]